by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Having cut their teeth sharing stages with rock 'n' roll bands, the Sonny Best Band have been shrugged off as a mere joke band. With countrified versions of "Calling Dr. Love" by Kiss and Wacko Jacko's "Billy Jean" tucked under their belt buckles, most people assumed they were smirking under their dollar-store cowboy hats. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Best's new record Boots, Camera, Action is as country as a belt made of rope with nary a titter nor a yee-haw to be heard.

"We were serious right from the get-go," says Best. "Even the covers were serious. I admit I didn't know that much about country when we started, but I got pulled into it as I started listening to it more. I like playing rock, but country just speaks to me more. We still like to play some of those covers, but we're more into songwriting now, and I think we really know where we are as a band now."

With new country being nothing more than pop music in a 10-gallon Stetson, country music has never fallen farther from grace. Probably the only shining light at the recent Grammys was when the coal miner's daughter herself, Loretta Lynn, snatched the award for best country album away from Tim McGraw and other masked popsters. Not bad, considering country-music radio stations never added any of Lynn's new songs to their playlists. "I think it's a real crime," says Best, "somebody like Loretta Lynn not being able to get on country radio after she's had such a huge influence on music in general, and has sang country for 60 years. Those were the people I looked up to when I first started getting into country. We always thought that we would just be a straight-up country band, like George Jones or Johnny Cash. We were playing for a while before we heard people calling us alt-country. We didn't even know what that was. Right now there are people like Hank Williams Jr. who are on alt-country labels, because radio and major labels just won't acknowledge them. It's so funny that artists like David Allan Coe and Loretta Lynn are just too country for their, ahem, country format."

With the success of magazines like No Depression and labels like Bloodshot and Lost Highway picking up the slack for country music's current misdeeds, it seems that the Sonny Best Band is in a good spot. Talks with labels down south have already started. The band will be hitting the road in a month, but you can catch them tonight, Thursday, Feb. 24, at Club Zone, warming up for Nashville hit-factory songwriter James Tally.

ASK ME WHY I SHOT A MAN IN RENO... jonathan.cummins@gmail.com

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